


You and I are playing the leading roles in our own Shakespearean Tragedy

by Baryshnikov



Series: Where Monsters lie [17]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Betrayal, Blood, Dark, Emotional Manipulation, Excessive references to Shakespeare, Falling In Love, I am messing with timelines sorry, I suck at writing about falling in love but I keep trying anyway, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jealousy, M/M, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Mild Sexual Content, Murder/Suicide, Naive Harry Potter, POV Second Person, Shakespeare Quotations, Shakespearean Tragedies - Freeform, Tom is not so nice, Twisted Romance, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love, glorification of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 21:25:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18725293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom is like the characters you read about in Shakespearean Tragedies, but that isn't a bad thing, is it?





	You and I are playing the leading roles in our own Shakespearean Tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a meltdown over exams so I wrote about my two favourite things, Shakespeare and Tom/Harry, and created this monstrosity. I was a little hesitant as to whether I should put this into this series, as it's not like most of the others, but there was still blood and murder so I shoved it in anyway.
> 
> Harry is 16 which might be classed as underage in some countries but here in the UK, it's not (so I haven't tagged it as such). 
> 
> Set from Harry's perspective.

_“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”_

Tom reminds you of your English class, or at least, of the characters that parade through the great Shakespeare plays that you have to study. Tom is the sort of character that seems to be too perfect to be real, the ones that have secrets hidden away, and so many skeletons hidden in their closets. You wonder whether there are dark secrets hidden underneath Tom’s skin. He seems the type to have one, perhaps more, buried away, behind his eyes and under his tongue. He’s a scholarship student with no family and no money, he is ripe ground for secrets, but in all the years you’ve known him, Tom has never been less than perfect. 

He’s popular and well-liked, always surrounded by the people who tell him that he’s simply wonderful, monotonous sycophants that don’t have half the charm or grace or elegance that he himself possesses. They tell him that he is a god that walks amongst men. And they’re right of course. He is the hero, and protagonist and prodigy. He is the sun burning up the sky and giving everyone a reason to rise. But he shines so brightly that he hides those who are merely stars, those such as yourself. To be seen you need to stop looking at him, but you cannot stop.

You think you might love him. 

Not romantically, not pathetically, not like Juliet. But you love him as an idol, as a brother, as a mentor. You love him how Horatio loves Hamlet, and Emilia loves Desdemona; how a supporting character can adore the hero because they know that just by being near them, they become a better person. You think you might love him. 

He doesn’t even know you’re alive. 

He does not have time for people like you. You heard him say once that people were naïve, too quick to see pretty flowers and want to touch them, that they never see the spiders that lurk between the petals. You are not naïve. Even if you are two years younger than he is, even if he is going to university next year. Oxford or Cambridge everyone says, but you know because you hear him say it, that he prefers London, and he says so, confidently because he has always been perverse. Even if all those things are true, you are not as naïve as he thinks. 

Whilst you are not sure if you love him, you know you admire him. For his intellect is just one side of his multifaceted brilliance. Intellect. Personality. Beauty. He has all of them. The perfect triad. You have none. Where Tom has razor-sharp intelligence, you have a blunt edge, where he can win anyone with his smile, you have to be grateful that you do not scare them away, where he is the pinnacle of human attractiveness, you are simply not.  
Instead, you have to be happy with just watching, with just admiring him from afar, and you spend a long time doing so. Too long if anyone were to watch you, fortunately, no one does. You are invisible, like the noxious air that must hang around Tom to make everyone in his presence seem so stupid, so infantile, so drunk on his very existence.  
They are so dull that Tom seems to spend perpetuum in boredom, amused but not entertained by the people he surrounds himself with. Your favourite time to watch him is at dinner, because there are so many things happening that he does not see you. He just smiles and nods and occasionally laughs with one of his many friends.

Everyone likes Tom. 

Though he doesn’t always appear present, rather that he is somewhere else in his mind, despite talking and smiling as though they have his undying attention. In those moments Tom’s eyes are so dark that you swear they’re glazed with red like the cranberry sauce that the lamb is served with on Tuesdays. Dark and warm and dangerous in a way you don’t quite understand but makes your insides fuzzy. 

You think you might love him. 

 

 _“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”_

You are somehow sure that Tom is the greatest actor in the country, for he can take on any part in the blink of an eye. For the most part, he plays someone painfully polite, someone clever and mild, not quite centre-stage, but not left to rot upon the sidelines. In his everyday life, he plays a Horatio, but that is not who he is the rest of the time. 

You saw him once, a little too close to Alphard Black in your year. You couldn’t see Tom’s face, but you could see Alphard’s, he looked scared, and Blacks don’t scare easily. Tom was speaking softly and slowly, and Alphard had his jaw clenched and for once wasn’t saying anything. A noise at the window caught your attention and by the time you turned back, Tom had gone, and Alphard was standing his head back against the wall, and his throat moving as he swallowed too hard.

He had an accident a few days later. 

A nasty fall on the stairs when he should have been somewhere else, one that had him hiding out in the sick bay for at least four days more than necessary for a broken collarbone.  
You couldn’t help but notice how uncomfortable Alphard looked when Tom smiled at him and slinked his arm around his shoulder, the first day he was back in the common room, nor could you miss Tom digging his fingers into the broken bone.  
That was when you realised Tom was not a Horatio, not even close. There was something in the way be smiled at Alphard wincing in pain, that was far crueller, far more scheming like Tom had slipped out of one skin and into another. 

It had been the same with that student that died when you were only in your fourth year. Myrtle. She fell from the astronomy tower. 

Officially she jumped.

But that didn’t stop the rumour that she was pushed. That, someone, had finally had enough of Myrtle and shoved her right off the edge. No one really believed those rumours. But still, you can’t shake that half-memory you have of Tom smirking just for a second when they told everyone, like he didn’t care.

Or he already knew. 

Then there was the way he smiled different smiles at different people, sometimes they were ever so gentle, such beautiful things, then he’d turn around and his smile would fall faster than Macbeth’s ego when he found out he wasn’t invincible. It wasn’t _nice_. But it was nice to watch. Nice to know that Tom wasn’t the perfect altruist that he liked to pretend he was.  
You suspect he doesn’t like nearly as many people as he wants the world to believe, especially not all the teachers he so vehemently sweet talks. You’ve heard him, it’s like pure sugar dripping from his tongue, and everyone laps it up like it’s the elixir of life. They don’t hear the half conversations that you hear, the ones he has with only his absolute favourites late at night, the ones where he disparages everyone.  
He’s just two-faced or maybe even three or four-faced. It makes you think of a rotten peach, the type that you think is fine until you bite into it and discover a rot so deep it coats the entire core  
He just slots into the perfect position far too easily, just smiling and helping people, only to criticise and slander and belittle them as soon as they turned their backs. It should have been horrible. It should have made you sick. 

But he does it so well. 

That you find you don’t care. 

 

_“Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on”_

You hate Abraxas, you really do. Hate his easy smiles and slow sly hands, and the way that Tom lets him touch him. You hate how close Tom holds him, fingers light on his back and their shoulders pressed together. The others watch with jealousy at what they want but Abraxas gets because everyone wants a piece of Tom. Just a shard to hold and treasure, to sleep with at night and cut their fingers on in the morning. 

Everyone wants a piece, but only Abraxas gets one. 

Abraxas doesn’t deserve Tom. He’s too stupid, a pretty, lithe, money-soaked body and nothing more. A mere subordinate, just a Roderigo to Tom’s Iago, too foolishly in love to see Tom doesn’t care about him, because how could Tom care for someone so…useless? Though you know the rumours, that Tom likes Abraxas because he is supple and pliant and ever so flexible. But no one has seen anything that could even render an accusation because Tom is intelligent, and he won’t let anyone truly see what he is. You bet he likes the mystery, likes the gossip, likes being the centre of attention. He plays that part well, sitting there on the sofa at midday, legs stretched out, he’s completely detached from the rest of them, just watching and oozing the sort of decorum you thought only royalty could possess.  
Today, you don’t watch Tom though, you watch Abraxas. Watch how he leans too close and touches for too long, and you wonder if everyone else sees the things you do, or whether they are so blinded by Tom that they do not realise how much liberty he gives to the rich slag that sits by his side. 

That evening you go to the seventh year’s dormitory because you’re looking for Cedric and someone said he might be there. You need him because he said he’d help with your maths homework and you’ve never been good at maths. But you don’t find Cedric. You find Abraxas. And Tom.  
He’s splayed out on the duvet like Ophelia as she drowned, except he’s not drowning. He’s just lying there writhing and sighing and groaning with Abraxas between his thighs. 

The sight is a slap in the face so palpable that you can feel it stinging. 

But they haven’t heard you. You know they haven’t because Tom’s fingers are still curling into Abraxas’ hair and pulling him closer, like it is a bouquet of white reeds, and he is the tragical romantic heroine that must undergo a baptism in the mire, in order to be free of her lost love.  
You know your mouth is open, and that you stand and stare in the middle of the room, they could easily see you if they only look. They aren’t looking. 

They’re too busy to look. 

Tom is too busy being pulled apart, and Abraxas is too busy savouring every second to even think of looking over. Though still, you know you should move, that this is a deep violation of their privacy, and yet, you feel as though you deserve to see. After all, every day you have to put up with seeing them at breakfast, and lunch, and dinner and then again in the common room, touching each other so subtly, hinting at what they have but never giving it away.

Now you know what they have. 

Now you can see another one of Tom’s faces, another one of his secrets. You should film it. Show everyone what their head boy does in his spare time. But you don’t. you don’t because just as you’re fumbling for your phone, Tom is tipping his head back further into the pillow and moaning for Abraxas and Abraxas alone. The name feels salt in a wound. You want him like you’ve never wanted anyone else, like Romeo wanted Juliet, and you want him to want you too. Not Abraxas. Not useless Abraxas who is as sweet and substanceless as the pink bubblegum he chews.  
Your eyes are burning from the sight, and you hate Abraxas more than you’ve hated anyone before, because he’s got exactly what you want, and there is nothing you can do about it. All you can do is stand and listen. Hearing Tom’s moans and knowing they will be forever scratched into your head. They’ll be all you ever think about, all you ever dream of, all you ever want. 

And all you can’t have. 

You turn away when Tom starts begging for more. Begging Abraxas to give him what he wants, what he needs, because Tom always needs more. 

You slam the door as you leave, so they know that someone saw. 

But you hear Tom laughing as you walk away, and you don’t know who you hate more, Abraxas, Tom, or yourself. 

 

 _“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”_

You lie awake after midnight, staring at the ceiling and listening to all the others as they breathe. It’s quiet and dark but your mind is loud. Tom’s moans bubble in your head and you are distinctly aware that the ache in your stomach is starting to spread like an infection right through your blood. You pretend that you don’t know what it is, try and fool yourself into thinking that you are not what you know you are. 

Lovesick. 

Painfully lovesick. 

You know you shouldn’t want him because Tom is made up of bad things. Perhaps horror and hatred have not yet painted his face with their glory-colours, but they have still left their mark upon him. It’s in the way he smiles and the way he walks and talks and just…exists. Every single inch of Tom is a warning light, a screaming siren that tells you to go back to how you were before. And you really shouldn’t want him, but you think that just makes you want him more even when you know you should stop. 

And you do know. 

You really do. 

You just can’t. 

Because as much as you try to tell yourself that Tom is nothing, but a monster dressed up so nice, you can’t bring yourself to believe it. He is too… perfect to be like that. The biggest crime that he has committed for certain is letting Abraxas into his life, and that is hardly the greatest criminal offence, merely a moral one. 

Your friends would laugh if they knew you wanted to get between Tom’s thighs. Wanted to get down on your knees and make him groan. They would say you never had a chance, and they’re probably right. After all, Tom is all the things that you are not. Then again, opposites attract, don’t they? You ask yourself that question again and again and again. Hoping each and every time to find an answer that was not there before, to reveal the secret of how to get Tom to notice you. Because the thought of him begging for you and you alone, makes your stomach flip over and over until you feel sick and dizzy, like you’ve been spinning in a circle for too long. Staring up at the dark ceiling you can almost picture his head knocked back in absolute bliss and the feeling of his fingers in your hair and his breath on your neck as he drags you closer to kiss him – 

Its almost embarrassing how elaborate your fantasies are. 

They only get worse when Tom glances up at you from across the library one day. You know he’s looking even before you look up, the heat in his stare is enough to make you uncomfortable, enough to start stripping away your composure in the most inappropriate way. Under the persistent gaze, you feel like a lamb, just a pretty little lamb going to the slaughterhouse.

And you love it. 

Love the adrenaline that he somehow pulls from the air shoots into you just by glancing your way. It's even worse when you collide in the corridor, the books you’re carrying just catching the edge of his shoulder. He stops and helps you of course because in public Tom is ever so sweet. But when he touches your hand, in the same way, that you used to scoff at in all those cheesy romantic comedies, your heart just collapses in on itself, and from the smouldering core erupts a hundred butterflies. 

 

_“Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love”_

It feels like you are lost, wandering the desert with no one and nothing but an endless horizon before you. No goals. No dreams. No endgame. No nothing because your entire life has become him and him alone.  
Whilst you don’t share any classes with him and you find yourself waiting outside of his classrooms, just waiting for his lesson to finish so you’ll be able to get another hit of perfection. You would not yet call it an addiction by your own accord, though you know that others might. They might think that you live and breathe for him. 

You do. 

If you could have seen this six months ago, three months ago, a fortnight ago even, you would have laughed. 

You’re not laughing now. 

You don’t think you have ever felt this way for anyone before. Certainly not Cho or Ginny or even that blonde boy you can’t remember the name of that you spent an entire year flirting with. None of them compared to this. 

What even was this?

You’re not sure anymore. It feels more than a crush, more than anything, really, it’s just so overwhelming. It takes the breath from your lungs and the floor from beneath your feet. It makes you sick and dizzy and desperate for something you’ve never had before, something you never knew you needed. But suddenly you want him. You want to taste his lips and feel them against yours, you want to touch his tongue with your own and find a thousand new sensation that you never thought existed. There are a hundred other things that you’d like to do, things that can only be called ‘things’ otherwise you’d blush for weeks and everyone would know. 

It’s all over when he pulls you aside after History, asks you to come with him so gentle and polite, and you’re a little scared because the people who go with Tom never talk about what he does. Instead, they keep their mouths shut, their collars high and their sleeves long. You don’t want to be one of them, but you do want to stay close to him for as long as you can

_You’ve been watching me._

He says, not stopping. You don’t need to answer him because he already knows your answer. Of course, you’ve been watching him, but has it really been that obvious? You hope not. But then again if Tom is going to give you what you want, then you’ll be happy to have been so obvious.  
He comes to a stop by a window, and the shadows of the already setting sun are heavy on his face, and you can’t stop staring. 

_Can you keep a secret, Harry?_

You nod. Anticipation and hope and fear all curling together in your stomach. Scared that this is going to be a penalty. It’s not. Rather, Tom kisses you in that empty corridor under the sun when there’s no one there to see.  
You can still taste Abraxas on his tongue, just as a hint of bubblegum, but you brush it off. Tom can do as he likes. He doesn’t need other people’s permission to kiss you, and he certainly doesn’t need Abraxas’. If anything, it gives you more of a thrill, a buzz to know that you were right about Tom, right about the stickiness that lurks under his skin because now he’s kissing you while tasting of someone else. 

 

_“These violent delights have violent ends”_

You love knowing that you’re the only one who knows Tom’s secret. The only one who realises that whilst Tom holds Abraxas’ arm and lets him mouth his neck when no one else is looking, he doesn’t care about him. 

He doesn’t love him. 

Even as he lets Abraxas kiss his fingers, dutiful, revering and so subordinate, he’s watching you with a half-smile. Watching you and inviting you to meet him later out by the lake where no one else will see. It really does make butterflies form in your stomach. Form and spread their wings and make you just so nervous.  
It’s worse when he’s watching you. When his eyes drag all over you like his is a parched man, and you are the water he craves. Abraxas who sits on the floor by his knee is too much like champagne to quench any thirst.  
You wonder if he realises that he is losing Tom. If he can possibly fathom that someone else, that someone being you, has managed to steal him from under his nose. It makes you smile in that way that Tom does, knowing, and slightly condescending because no one, other than you, sees what Tom really is. None of them knows the real Tom. 

But you do. 

Only you. 

That’s when you know you love him. Love the way he talks and the way he laughs at your bad jokes and attempts at humour.  
Your times together are short and violent, bruises on your spine from being pushed against walls and grass stains on your shirt from lying on the grass. Just snatched kisses in corridors and knees brushing under the table. You’re sometimes invited to sit with him and his ‘friends’ though you don’t think they like you. Especially Abraxas, perhaps he can taste you on the tip of Tom’s tongue, or smell you on his clothes, either way, he glares at you, until Tom tells him to cut it out. 

When you are alone together, Tom calls you his sweet prince. You think it’s his way of saying that he loves you because Tom has a complicated relationship with words like love. He says they’re overrated, that people lie, that they never mean love, they just want something. You wonder if someone hurt him once; if there’s a genuine reason that he hates the word 'love'. 

There has to be. 

But if there is, he doesn’t share it with you. Not even when you ask him. Instead, he just kisses you under the sun until you forget what you were trying to say. 

_You’re different to all the others._

He says that as the sky fades to pink and clouds that had been hovering white, now reflect the colour back and become candyfloss smudges across the sky. You believe him. You believe that he loves you because the red glaze does not soak his eyes, and he smiles so purely, that it truly could melt butter. 

You always thought that you didn’t like sports, but that was before you found the ones that Tom plays. The ones he practices diligently for, with his mouth and his tongue and his hands. Exertion has never felt as good as it does when Tom is pushing you against the grass and reciting sonnets that were not appropriate for lessons, between soft slow kisses that leave you wanting something more. Something he promises you if you’ll just let him. 

That night you accept the invitation into his bed. 

You don’t regret it. 

 

 _“Come, let's away to prison; We two alone will sing like birds I'th'cage."_

Together you lie between the grass and the sky, and he smiles like he means it. Together you watch the birds fly across the great expanse of blue, and with a rush, that can only come from love, you ask him if he’ll run away with you, or rather that you can run away with him. It’s not like anyone will miss you, after all, the sole reason you’re at this boarding school in the first place is that nobody wants you. 

He laughs until he realises that you’re serious. 

Then he looks surprised, but not unhappy. It is well known throughout the school that Tom has now turned down the offer from Cambridge, much to the disappointment of most of the teachers. He says he doesn’t want that. That he doesn’t want to be pushed, that he wants to find his own path, and he certainly doesn’t want his life dictated to him. Perhaps that’s what spurs him to ask:

_Would you die for me?_

You know you would even before the question has fully formed upon his lips. Of course, you’d die for him, and he would for you, a thousand times, a thousand agonies in the world is what you’d endure so that he could live.  
He laughs when you say that, laughs and kisses you so softly. Those gorgeous little kisses that make you feel like you’ve known him forever, as though you’ve already lived a thousand years at each other’s sides. 

_You know, I’d die for you too._

You can hardly believe him, and he laughs again at your silence. The words continue to ring in your ears, no one has ever promised to die for you. No one else has ever wanted to. It makes you feel special, a warmth seeping from your heart through your blood to your very fingertips, filling you up with a love you’ve never felt before. And it’s just so perfect. 

Tom’s next words are very quiet, almost hesitant. 

_Do you want to die with me?_

The words catch on the wind and seem to hover for a few seconds after he’s said them. Before you can even think on the statement though, you can feel yourself nodding, as though a subconscious part of your brain understands that this is important, imperative, the most critical decision that you will ever make, and it already knows the answer.  
Before you can backtrack, Tom is smiling. Smiling in a way you haven’t seen before. Perhaps it is relief, a joy that you too feel that this is something that needs to be preserved beyond mere life. You wonder whether this true love. It certainly is in the literature that Tom talks about. Dying is the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate devotion to one another.  
You can almost imagine it in the most morbid part of your brain. Lying beside him as you die, each other being the last thing that you ever see on this earth. It’s romantic in a way, tragic in another, and absolutely perfect in every sense imaginable. The two of you lying together, your hands interlinked as death wraps it’s comforting arms around you and plucks from your troubled minds all your mortal worries. 

If you must die in this life, then you must die with Tom by your side. 

 

 _“I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.”_

He provides everything and you don’t ask where he got it all from, that would be impolite, and the smile he gives you doesn’t make you want to know. You might have seen the other faces of Tom but that doesn’t mean you want them, it doesn’t mean you love them, or even that you like them. They are simply there, lurking like a serpent beneath murky water, and as long as you do not disturb it, you’ll be fine. 

It’s still there though.

And it comes out as Tom shows you the things he’s got for you, lets you touch the kitchen knives, that he said are somehow more poetic than other, simpler methods. Stabbing yourself through the heart, embodying the romance of Romeo and Juliet whilst also showing your dedication to this cause, to this perfect end. 

Well, it’s gorgeous. 

But there is a flicker of doubt, a seed threatening to germinate in the back of your mind. Perhaps you should have complained, mentioned it, but Tom spoke with so much conviction that you just had to go through with it, despite the reservations that were building up and up inside you. 

He meets you after your final exam. He’s already finished his, and despite the result not yet being published, everyone knows he’s got the grades everyone wanted him to get because that’s just what Tom’s like.  
He said he knew a place to do it, a place where the two of you might not be found until the next September, because there is no one around to worry about you. You sort of wish that it wasn’t true, that you did have a real home and a real family, but if you had, you doubt that you would have met Tom.

That would have been the greatest tragedy of the age. 

The room is small and quiet, a storage facility where they keep the new English textbooks. Tom smiles as he sees that you realise you will die with the very books that brought you together. So very fitting.  
You also note though, that Tom was right, they only come to this room in the Autumn when they need the new books, you also know that the door locks when you shut it, and you can’t get out from the inside.

Under the dull lights that do not mimic the sun no matter how hard they try, Tom kisses you again, slow and careful, just the way he’s learnt you like. You kiss until your kneeling, until Tom is pulling away and your heart starts to hammer because you realise now is the time to commit.  
Tom pushes the knife into your hand before you can stop him, he says you get to go first, as though it is the greatest privilege in the world, and maybe it is? The plastic is colder than you thought it would be in here and lighter. The blade glints under those dim orange lights. The weight of the world, or rather just your life, but that is your whole world, is heavy on your shoulders and it brings a lump to your throat. You feel the same as you did on the day that Tom first kissed you, when he led you down corridors, and you followed him. 

Now he will follow you. 

You press the point to ribs because there’s no way you’d get it through your breast bone. You just don’t have the strength. You swallow and glance at Tom one more time. He’s still there, still smiling sweetly, still waiting ever so patiently for his turn to enter the new world.  
The knife is harder than you thought to push into yourself, and it hurts more than you ever believed possible. There is something surreal about watching metal sink into flesh, to watch it disappear inside you, like a twisted magic trick. 

It makes you sick. 

And hurt. 

It hurts so much. 

You can feel tears scratching at your eyes, they want to be set free, but you don’t want to cry in front of Tom. You don’t want him to see at the last second that you are weak, that you are unworthy of the love that he has so generously bestowed upon you, his gracious gift from the world of the gods. 

But you can’t do it. 

There is blood. It’s just a trickle at the moment, sliding down your stomach, wet and slick and too warm. The wound is not as deep as he wanted, but you just can’t bear it anymore. You just want to die with him beside you. You did not want so much pain to accompany it. 

_Beauty requires suffering, and love requires pain._

He murmurs, kissing your cheek and taking your hand. With the coolness of his palm you can focus, you can inch that knife a little deeper, and a little deeper, and a little deeper until you’re crying out because you have hit your heart. 

 

 _“The prince of darkness is a gentleman!”_

His fingers are cold on your cheek, and you close your eyes because you can’t wait to die together. To share the most romantic death in all of literature. 

But nothing happens. 

No pain, no sound, no feeling. Just emptiness. You open your eyes and Tom is kneeling before you, just smirking, lips curling so nasty-nice. Cold water runs down your spine as you realise. 

He was never going to die with you. 

The blood is seeping slowly through your shirt, staining gorgeous blooms of crimson, and your lips can’t form any words. Not even sounds can escape the vacuum that your mouth has become. Betrayal is bitter on your tongue; sharp and acidic, it almost burns the very corners of your mouth. You are sure in that moment, that Tom has never tasted betrayal before. His world is too carefully constructed to allow such distasteful things as a betrayal to happen to him. You were just another pawn to play with. A new character to position in his elaborate game, and you played along so well. All the time you knew that he was Iago, but you did not think that you were Othello in his masterpiece. You thought, you honestly, naively, thought that he had come to love you in a way that not even he with his own gold-thread words could explain. 

But he hadn’t. 

Distress, though it sounds pathetic and medieval in your head, is exactly what is spilling from your mouth. A horrible concoction of pain and sorrow and grief and guilt. You should have known better, and you didn’t. You let yourself be bound in the webs that you thought you recognised. 

You let him use you. 

Now you are worthless to him. 

Something akin to a sob scrapes the back of your throat, leaving harsh lines and broken words in its wake. He shushes you, fingers tracing your lips, leaning closer and kissing you like you mean the world. You kiss him back, hoping, dreaming, begging, and somehow believing that you can change his mind. You know you can’t when you feel the weight of his fingers curling over the knife’s handle. His nails run back and forth, scraping along the plastic before he pushes it hard and you cry out. 

He yanks it out still smiling. 

The blood flows heavier now, and sickness starts to churn in your stomach. _Disgust. Horror. Shame._ He reads you like an open book and continues to smile because he doesn’t care for your feelings, or even for your life. All he does is come so close, and kiss you again and for a minute you stupidly let yourself believe that he might save you…

But then he jabs his fingers into you 

and you know he will not. 

He licks his lips as he stretches your skin and makes you cry. His smile only spreading wider when the salt of your tears mixes with the iron in your blood. He unbuttons your shirt and draws a bloody heart across your ribs. 

_Don’t cry, Harry._

He says it with that smile that you thought meant he cared. You cry harder. You can’t help it. He has ripped the world from beneath your feet, in fact, he has dragged your very life away from you, and now he is taunting you with that angel smile that has the devil’s teeth. 

_I’m sorry it had to be like this._

He stands, and you feel ever so small, so defenceless and so unbearably weak. There is nothing you can do but watch as he walks away from you, his footsteps so loud against the floor, you notice then that he left the door on the latch. He looks back when his hand touches the door handle, almost like he pities you. But then he’s smiling, and you finally can see that true monster that he hid from you, that he hides from everyone. 

He doesn’t care about you, and he never has. 

You were a puppet, a way he could stave that inevitable boredom that comes from being so much better than everyone else. You were entertainment for his final year, and by the time they find you, he’ll be long gone.  
When the door opens you see Abraxas, ever the faithful dog, waiting against the wall. You know you look pathetic, hands braced against the rough carpet floor, blood spilling out, and features so helpless. But still, with your eyes, you beg Abraxas to help you, and just for a second, you see a flicker, a desire to be good. But before he can do anything, Tom’s lips are against his, and Tom’s hands pressed into his hips and you know Abraxas will do nothing. 

Tom turns back towards you and lets the door start to close. The last thing you make out in the black of the corridor is his smile in the dark and his words hanging on the empty air: 

_Goodnight, sweet prince._

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes from Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello


End file.
